What
We Once Were
We
tucked our genitals— vestigial tails—
between
our legs and pretended
we were girls. Geoffrey’s
sister came
upon us,
thinking we were playing monster
trucks. She screamed and ran to mother,
who, in
the name of her social
role reinforcement, told us sin
led
straight to hell and led us down
the
hallway, where she held us down
and
whipped us with a wooden spoon
until our backsides grew splintered
and
tanned as that inner pink we
pried
open earlier, searching
within
each other for something
of ourselves or what we once were.
